Wallix unveil their global Channel Strategy for 2015

Paris, 20/01/2015 : WALLIX (www.wallix.com), a vendor of specialized security solutions in traceability and securing privileged access to corporate information systems, unveiled a new global channel program for 2015 at its partner conference in Paris. More than 30 certified partners gathered for the annual event which also saw UNIDEES win the Best International Partner award and BULL, an Atos Company, win for Best Partner in France.

WALLIX aggressive channel strategy for 2015 will accelerate business for partners offering Wallix AdminBastion (WAB). Dominique Meurisse, WALLIX COO said, "It’s our ambition to grow faster than a market growing at more than 20 % per year, this objective relies exclusively on our partners." To achieve this goal, WALLIX has launched a partner program that focuses investment on two complementary levels of integration partners as well as opening opportunities for Managed Service Providers and Consulting companies to leverage its growth.

The launch of this program follows the arrival of Marc Gueroult, Channel Manager, who joined WALLIX in 2014 to develop this new strategy. Through this program available in France and globally, WALLIX will recognise the loyalty of its existing partners and expand its network, which currently includes over 50 companies in over 20 countries.

Specifically, the WAB Global Partner Program is structured around 4 levels designed to reward partners their commitment to WALLIX and its customers:- Elite and Premier levels for integrators- Consulting Program for Consulting Firms- MSSP Program for Managed Services Providers

Marc Gueroult concluded, "The launch of our program is a strategic announcement for WALLIX which has invested heavily to create value-added packages. The contribution of our partners to our growth is key to our continuing development. We will continue to invest to create lasting relationships based on mutual trust and honesty with our network and giving us the platform to stand out in this high-growth market.”

Wallix AdminBastion’s compatibility now extends to the main hypervisors on the market

The vendor now covers Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM and VMWare in particular.

Paris, April 15th 2014:WALLIX, European vendor specializing in the traceability and control of privileged accounts announced today the compatibility of Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 (WAB) with virtualization infrastructures Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM. Last year, the vendor had announced the compatibility of its Privileged User Management solution with VMware ESX Server.

For the specialist in the traceability and control of privileged accounts, compatibility with these new hypervisors means that WAB is available not only in the form of hardware appliances, but integrates in the market’s main virtualization environments as well. Businesses can thus deploy the privileged user management solution in the technical architecture of their choice. This gives the solution high operational flexibility and unmatched versatility on the market.

For example, compatibility with KVM now allows installing WAB in OpenStack architectures which have been adopted by many public, hybrid and private cloud providers, thereby providing “cloud” infrastructures with a level of security similar to the levels found in internal corporate infrastructures.

Likewise, WAB’s compatibility with Microsoft Hyper-V allows many clients, such as administrations or hospitals that have opted for this technology, to deploy Wallix AdminBastion while benefiting from the ecosystem existing around Microsoft Hyper-V.

Jean-Noël de Galzain, CEO and founder of WALLIX commented, “We have been increasingly successful on the market, in France as well as abroad. Extending Wallix AdminBastion’s compatibility to other hypervisors was naturally the next step to a trend that began with VMware ESX coverage and WAB’s VMWare Ready certification. As virtual environments are becoming more widespread due to the advantages for which they are known, it has become strategic for WALLIX to be able to offer these infrastructures a solution that can further strengthen their security, especially in terms of privileged user management. Eventually, it will be possible to integrate Wallix AdminBastion into any type of virtual infrastructure.”

In order to complement support for these virtualization infrastructures, WALLIX has issued a new type of “corporate” license, that will enable the deployment of as many WABs as necessary to protect a defined number of resources. As such, any WALLIX client with a corporate license can accurately adapt his WAB infrastructure to his technical requirements, without having to acquire additional licenses.

WAB as a Service: WALLIX launches AdminBastion in MSSP mode

The French vendor now offers its clients the possibility of installing Wallix AdminBastion, its privileged user traceability and control solution, in their infrastructures while delegating the administration and daily operation of the product to a trusted third party

Paris, April 1st, 2014: WALLIX, European leader in the traceability of access and management of privileged accounts announced today the launch of its WAB As A Service (WaaS) range, which now makes it possible to own a privileged user traceability and control solution in an information system administered by a trusted third party.

This range is aimed especially at CIOs and CISOs who are convinced of the helpfulness of Privileged User Management solutions such as Wallix AdminBastion, but whose resources for operating one are limited.

For Jean-Noël de Galzain, CEO and founder of WALLIX, “The challenges of controlling privileged users keep growing. The number of incidents – whether voluntary or involuntary – relating to these internal or external user populations increases every single day. Most of the incidents have huge financial repercussions arising from the increase in privileges granted on a database or sensitive system. This would be a hacker’s logical approach after having managed to penetrate a network. However, we noticed that certain decision makers are restricted in the way they use PUM solutions due to a lack of human resources dedicated to the daily operation of the solution. In this context, WALLIX provides a solution in a fully administered service mode and transforms the initial investment into a rental that includes the solution as well as its operation.”

The principle of this range is very simple: a Wallix AdminBastion solution, scaled to the requirements of the company, is installed in the premises then managed by a trusted third party who takes charge of the day-to-day administration and operation of the solution, specifically: installation of WAB, remote monitoring, operation (adding/deleting users, modifying resources or administrators and maintenance).

The range also includes the generation of a monthly report summarizing the overall activity on Wallix AdminBastion.

There are many advantages to WAB as a Service:

Full delegation of the project to a trusted third party:- From the installation stage to day-to-day management, PUM becomes a solution. The availability of teams is no longer an issue, and they can as such focus on the information produced by a neutral third party instead of on the production of information

Financial flexibility of the implementation:- There is no investment in terms of licenses or maintenance, and actual cost can be planned, as WaaS is based on a flat rate in the form of a monthly fee that includes the cost of human intervention.

Jean-Noël de Galzain added “This new range follows a trend that is already strong on the IT market. There is indeed a considerable divide between the diversity or even the number of solutions on the market, and the available resources for administering them in a company. In this context, the service mode makes perfect sense. Offering WAB As A Service means giving our clients the opportunity to benefit from the best in the innovation of protection from internal threats, governance of the access granted to external service providers, and password management, while keeping investment costs low, without the deployment constraints and without having to form internal teams. In short, it’s protection with an immediate return on investment.”

WAB as a Service is already available. Quotes will be given upon request.

To find out more about WAB as a Service, please contact WALLIX at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The free trial version of Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 is now available

Having been tested by clients and resellers during a beta testing campaign, Wallix AdminBastion is now available in a free trial version on the website of the French vendor of privileged user traceability and control solutions.

Paris, February 25th 2014:WALLIX, European vendor specializing in the traceability and access control of privileged accounts has announced that its WAB 4.0 solution, the latest major version of its solution, is now available in a free trial version.

This new version of Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 focuses on two major areas: productivity and the extension of traceability to applications and databases. Extending traceability to business applications makes the monitoring of privileged accounts accessible and fully adaptable to the production restrictions of information systems with regard to the management of IT risks.

Traceability of privileged access to applications

Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 allows providing users with single sign-on authentication (SSO) when they access information systems, then logging access to sensitive data and saving operations performed. These features cover the business applications that are essential to the proper running of the business (finance, R&D, CRM, business applications, etc) as much as they cover the infrastructure’s management applications (hypervisors, databases, etc). The CISO or auditor will therefore gain access to data saved in real time or in deferred time, which enables avoiding certain deliberate or involuntary incidents, and having increased visibility over the activity of all users who have access and administration privileges on applications such as VMware ESX, Oracle, MySQL etc. that may prove critical to the business.

Transparent integration into directories: easier provisioning, integration into the IS and lower TCO

WALLIX has developed a new provisioning system that meets the operating restrictions encountered by IT teams which manage one or several directories that are sometimes voluminous and often require regular updates. This new feature added to Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 enables seamless integration into an Active Directory Server or LDAP infrastructure to manage users and their privileges. Thanks to this new feature, provisioning becomes easier, less time is taken for the integration process and as a consequence, the total cost of ownership Wallix AdminBastion greatly decreases.

Signing and encrypting saved data: strengthening proof

The probative value of security solutions is essential when fraud occurs or an incident arises and there is a need to determine liability, the source of a problem and the amends to be made.

Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 encrypts and signs all saved sessions to guarantee their non-repudiation, validity and confidentiality. These saving and encryption features allow in particular assigning a legal value to the logs gathered by WAB, which may then be used as evidence in the event of a security incident or an audit. The CISO or CIO can then monitor the activity of its external or internal service providers and find a solution to the requirements for producing evidence or accountability or even enforcing compliance with local and international standards of managing IT risk.

Marc Balasko, Product Manager at WALLIX, commented, “Thanks to WAB’s new traceability features, our clients can finally monitor and secure the administration of their critical applications, and thereby meet increasingly tighter regulatory restrictions. WAB now allows you to know exactly what privileged users are doing and keep control over their activity regardless of their scope of intervention.”

“The increase in pressure on IT budgets has pushed a growing number of companies to outsource and use applications in the cloud, despite the potential risks that these choices expose them to. With Wallix AdminBastion 4.0, we offer a major version that not only allows monitoring users’ access to the infrastructure, but to applications as well as to the Company’s sensitive data. In a context of omnipresent risk, extending the vision from an application point of view to an infrastructure point of view allows integrating risk management into the governance of the information system and greatly raising the level of security to meet business compliance needs (healthcare data, PCI-DCCS, MSSP, SOX, etc) without holding back the capacity of our clients’ IS to adapt to the needs of the market,” emphasized Jean-Noël de Galzain, CEO and Founder of WALLIX. “Thanks to our users’ feedback, this major version of WAB also provides innovations in user experience and in the installation of the solution in its IT context. With these innovations and more maturity, we are better equipped today to keep up with the need for traceability in our client’s information systems, raise their level of digital trust and step up to the position of leader on the Privileged Account Management market.”

Wallix AdminBastion is now certified VMware Ready

Paris, February 26th 2014: The virtualization of servers is increasingly transforming the relationship that corporations have with IT every single day. Virtualization provides currently operational information systems with unequalled levels of flexibility, speed and automation for their applications. Nonetheless, the need to secure access to these poorly monitored environments is becoming more and more pressing.

WALLIX, European leader specializing in the traceability, monitoring and securing of privileged accounts, has announced that its solution Wallix AdminBastion is now certified VMware Ready™. This certification indicates that the solution was evaluated and had gone through a battery of detailed tests conducted by VMware and is now included as a virtual appliance solution in the product catalogue of VMware partners.

Passing the intensive VMware-specific tests adds to the guarantee that the Wallix AdminBastion solution is extremely compatible with VMware’s technology and that it can readily be deployed in clients’ production environments.

The VMware Ready program is a VMware co-branding program for certified partner products, which is an advantage of VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. With more than 1 800 members worldwide, VMware’s TAP program unites leading technological partners to provide them with a full set of VMware commercial and technical services, assistance, tools and expertise so that collective clients enjoy the best advantages.

When asked about this certification, Jean-Noël de Galzain, CEO and founder of WALLIX enthused, “Seeing the Wallix AdminBastion solution enter the VMware Ready™ program is a new breakthrough. Our clients can now be reassured of our product satisfying VMware’s specific interoperability criteria and of the fact that the solution we are offering can readily be run in demanding production environments. It’s an additional guarantee of quality that will raise our solutions’ level of reliability.”

Serge Adda, Product Vice-President at WALLIX, explains “This certification is a great source of pride for us. It falls in line with a process of continuous improvement that aims to adapt Wallix AdminBastion in the best way possible to our clients’ needs and environments, both by simplifying its use and reducing its operating cost.”

Wallix AdminBastion is the first traceability and privileged user management solution to be certified by France’s Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI).

Paris, 26 November 2013: WALLIX, the software vendor specialising in traceability and privileged user management, has announced that its Wallix AdminBastion (WAB) solution has obtained First Level Security Certification (CSPN) in the “Identification, certification and access control” category defined by France’s Network and Information Security Agency (Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information, or ANSSI).

ANSSI awards CSPN certification, following an audit by an approved assessment centre, solely to solutions that pass its vulnerability tests and whose cryptographic modules comply with ANSII’s General Security Framework (RGS), which is rapidly becoming an essential criterion for public authorities and public companies.

CSPN is a useful benchmark for IT Directors, Information Security Managers and Risk & Compliance Managers who must chose from the many commercially-available solutions and so need information on the products’ security and compliance with the standards defined by the manufacturers’ independent governing bodies.

The increasing number and sophistication of cybercrime attacks, some of which involve inside help, oblige companies and organisations to strengthen their management and control of all privileged users connecting to their information systems. These privileged users may be system administrators (internal or external service providers), database administrators, developers, project managers or operators providing remote facilities management and IT maintenance (networks, security hardware, applications such as SAP, Oracle, HRIS, CRM and financial packages, and cloud solutions such as VMWare and VSphere).

Their role requires them to work on critical corporate IT infrastructures, involving risks affecting access to sensitive and confidential data (system failures, data loss or theft, and fraud). Regulatory standards such as ARJEL, Basel, SOX and PCI DSS and legislation on the hosting of personal health data, such as France’s Act no. 2002-303 for example, are growing as a result, requiring companies to protect themselves and access to the data entrusted to them. In this context, companies should set up appropriate solutions, giving those certified by information system security benchmarking bodies such as France’s ANSSI their highest priority. WALLIX has responded to these issues by creating Wallix AdminBastion, its agentless Privileged User Management traceability solution, which is available as a software package or as an appliance and is easy to deploy and manage on a daily basis. Wallix AdminBastion is essential whenever internal or external service provider access must be monitored and traced. Its functions for recording all privileged users’ sessions for examination in real time or in logs can also be used to review all actions performed on the information system as and when needed (audit, unexplained security incident, failure or forensics). WAB then serves as a form of CCTV monitoring the information system.

“We are particularly proud to announce WAB’s First Level Security Certification. This required us to enhance our product’s security functions so that it complies with ANSSI’s recommendations, and this certification recognising WAB’s quality and reliability confirms to our existing customers that they have made the right decision and should encourage those looking for a trustworthy solution to choose Wallix,” says Wallix CEO Jean-Noël de Galzain. “In addition to the technical criteria, by taking this step we are showing our desire to build an ecosystem of trust with our customers and partners, in which WAB’s added value is clear: regaining control of privileged user accounts and tracing all privileged user activities in information systems and in the cloud.”

The new version of Wallix AdminBastion (WAB), WAB 4.0, focuses on two major areas:improving productivity, and extending traceability to cover applications and databases

Paris, 3 October 2013: WALLIX, the European software editor specialising in providing traceability and privileged user access control solutions, announces the release of WAB 4.0, the new major version of its Wallix AdminBastion solution. In response to customer feedback and the growing number of WAB users, Wallix has extended its traceability to cover business applications, thereby making privileged user access control control fully accessible and adaptable to the production constraints of information system risk management.

Traceability of privileged access to applications

Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 provides a single sign-on (SSO) for users when they connect to the information system and then traces all access to sensitive data, recording all operations performed. These functionalities cover both the business applications that the enterprise needs in order to operate properly (finance, R&D, CRM, specialised applications, etc.) and its infrastructure management applications (hypervisors, databases, etc.). As a result, the CISO or auditor can see details of all operations in real time or logs, enabling the enterprise to avoid accidental or malicious incidents and providing greater visibility of all actions performed by users holding access and administrator rights for critical applications such as VMware ESX, Oracle, MySQL, etc.

WALLIX has developed a new provisioning system that meets the operational constraints of IT teams responsible for managing sometimes huge and often regularly updated directories. This new functionality introduced in Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 enables transparent WAB integration into Active Directory Server or LDAP infrastructures providing user account/rights management. This ensures simplified provisioning and quicker integration, considerably reducing Wallix AdminBastion’s TCO.

Signing and encryption of recordings: strengthened proof

In the event of an incident or fraud, it is essential that security solutions provide legally-recognised proof in determining responsibility, the problem’s origin and then obtaining compensation.

Wallix AdminBastion 4.0 encrypts and signs all recorded sessions in order to guarantee their non-repudiation, validity and confidentiality. These recording and encryption functionalities give probative value to the IT traces collected by the WAB, so that they can then be used as proof in the event of a security incident or audit. As a result, CISOs or IT department managers can examine their internal or external service providers’ work and provide proof of actions or accountability when required, as well as ensuring that the enterprise complies with local and international IT risk management standards.

Marc Balasko, Product Manager at Wallix, says: “Thanks to WAB’s new traceability functionalities, our customers can now control and secure their critical applications’ administration, and so meet the increasingly stringent regulatory constraints. WAB enables them to know exactly what their privileged users do and to keep control of their actions, regardless of their users’ scope of responsibility.”

“IT budget restrictions are driving increasing numbers of enterprises to outsource and use cloud applications, despite the potential risks that this involves. With Wallix AdminBastion 4.0, we are releasing a main version that provides user access control not only for the enterprise’s network infrastructure, but also for its applications and sensitive data. In view of the risks involved in all areas of IT, extending WAB’s scope to cover applications as well as the network infrastructure means that risk management can now be integrated into information system governance and the level of security can be greatly increased in line with industry-specific compliance requirements (health-related data, PCI-DCCS, MSSP, SOX, etc.) without hampering our customers’ ability to adapt their information systems to market demands,” stresses Jean-Noël de Galzain, the CEO and founder of Wallix. “In response to user feedback, this major new version of WAB also includes innovations that improve the solution’s usability and ease of installation in information systems. Thanks to these innovations and greater product maturity, we are now better equipped to assist our customers in meeting their information system traceability needs and raise their digital trust level, and so assume our rightful position as a leading player in the Privileged Account Management market.”

WALLIX and Lieberman Software form strategic partnership to control and audit privileged access activity

Lieberman Software Corporation, a US-based leader in enterprise privileged identity management, and WALLIX, the European leader in Traceability and Session Recording, today announced a strategic partnership aimed at reinforcing and extending their mutual offer to the market.

Lieberman Software’s Enterprise Random Password Manager™ secures privileged accounts present in the cross-platform enterprise. This includes the “super user” credentials utilized by IT Administrators, as well as privileged account passwords found in services and application tiers.

WALLIX, with its flagship solution Wallix AdminBastion (WAB), provides a privileged account management system with traceability and session recordings of users’ sessions, delivering a new level of visibility and security to manage insider threats.

By joining forces, WALLIX and Lieberman Software provide a solution that brings together the best elements of Privileged Identity Management and Privileged Account Management. Customers will benefit from the best implementation of a Privileged User Management solution with a common concept: an agentless technology that is easy to deploy and delivers a quick return on investment.

According to Jean-Noël de Galzain, Chief Executive Officer at WALLIX : “Nowadays, more and more companies are facing challenges, notably in terms of business organization, cloud infrastructures and services-oriented usage. Companies are seeking solutions to improve their IT security governance and reduce insider threats, while wishing to avoid the complexity of agent-based solutions or multi-year projects. Lieberman Software and WALLIX work totally complementary to manage the full scope or requirements, including privileged account management, privileged password management, and traceability through session recordings. This approach has already secured large enterprises in Europe and Middle East. ”

“Controlling access to powerful privileged accounts, and then monitoring and documenting the actions taken by users who are granted privileged access, are crucial to maintaining a secure enterprise,” said Calum MacLeod, VP of EMEA at Lieberman Software. “By combining privileged credential management with in-depth session recording, Lieberman Software and Wallix are ensuring that all authorized users are complying with security best practices and regulatory compliance requirements."

About Lieberman Software Corporation

Lieberman Software provides privileged identity management and security management products to more than 1200 customers worldwide, including nearly half of the Fortune 50. By automatically discovering and managing privileged accounts throughout the network, Lieberman Software helps secure access to sensitive data, thereby reducing internal and external security vulnerabilities, improving IT productivity and helping ensure regulatory compliance. The company developed the first solution for the privileged account management space, and its products continue to lead the market. Lieberman Software is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with an office in Austin, TX and channel partners throughout the world. For more information, visit www.liebsoft.com.

MIG Bank selects Wallix AdminBastion to control access to its trading servers

Paris, 18/9/2013:MIG Bank, formerly known as MIG Investments, was established in Neuchatel, Switzerland as an online Forex broker. In 2009, it was the first Forex broker to obtain a Swiss banking licence. Since its foundation ten years ago, it has expanded its online trading offering and is now Switzerland’s largest bank specialised in online Forex and CFD trading, with clients in more than 120 countries.

The MIG Bank IT team consists of 19 people responsible for its network, helpdesk, development, project managers, architects and trading IT system. The team is reinforced by a security officer.

Initial needs

To cover itself against the risks of human error, malice and privileged access to its critical data, MIG Bank installed a privileged user management solution for its trading platform stakeholders. The existing solution was user-unfriendly and difficult to use on a day-to-day basis. The teams’ reluctance to use the solution left the MIG Bank exposed to internal risks. As a result, MIG bank decided to replace it and set out to find a solution that not only eliminated these shortcomings but also offered a wider range of features.

In September 2012, MIG bank began its search via the Swiss system integrator SCRT, which demonstrated that the Wallix AdminBastion (WAB) solution provided the perfect answer to MIG Bank’s two problems of user ergonomics and functionality. MIG Bank’s e-trading team then tested AdminBastion, the privileged user control and traceability solution, which met their expectations perfectly. In February 2013, MIG Bank installed the WAB in its IT system.

Deployment

Wallix AdminBastion is deployed within a dedicated DMZ, and it is used by approximately fifteen people employed by or linked with MIG Bank. The main use of Wallix AdminBastion consists in managing all trading server access and all actions performed. This provides security and traceability for all activities on the servers.

All helpdesk staff needing to access these trading applications must also log on via the WAB, both so that every maintenance or support operation carried out on the applications is recorded, and to allow reverse engineering.

Ultimately, Wallix AdminBastion will also be set up to authenticate and monitor all external service provider actions on MIG Bank’s servers, with the aim of avoiding the risks posed by these privileged external users who equally have extended permissions for the Swiss bank’s critical servers.

Benefits

Trading server supervisionMIG Bank now has a more ergonomic and easy-to-use privileged user control and traceability solution for managing the risks posed by the users of the Bank’s critical data. All activities recorded on the trading servers are now supervised, thereby ensuring that all trading activities are secure and can be traced.

Compliance with bank regulatory standardsWallix AdminBastion also enables MIG Bank to comply with FINMA* regulatory requirements, which demand the traceability of all movements on trading servers.

Consistent, reinforced securityWAB improves MIG Bank’s supervision of all actions performed by privileged users and mitigates the risks relating to insider threats (errors or malicious acts by users with access to corporate IT systems).

“Bank security faces many risks. Banks should, of course, protect themselves against external attacks, but the risks of human error or malicious acts by users with extended permissions, such as traders, external service providers or administrators, must also be considered. Wallix AdminBastion has enabled us to set up this additional level of security, meaning that we now know exactly what our external service providers do on our critical data servers. As well as providing traceability, Wallix AdminBastion also ensures that we comply with the banking regulatory standards and enables us to respond more rapidly in the event of an IT system incident.” Yoann Bourdin, IT system manager"

In recent years, businesses and individuals alike have needed to devote considerable time to cyber defence and cyber security. The more time passes, the greater the number of attacks. These attacks are becoming increasingly targeted, diverse and extensive, and cybercrime is now part of our daily life. Historically, the antivirus and firewall vendors have dominated the market. Paradoxically, however, they address only part of the issues, resulting in the number of incidents and their seriousness increasing despite IT security budgets also increasing. This is because they overlook an entire aspect of IT security: the management of privileged users, which is known as insider threat management.

WALLIX, however, the European vendor specializing in privileged user management and traceability, believes that a comprehensive and consistent security strategy must, of course, protect companies concerned not only from external threats but also from the risks resulting from the absolute freedom enjoyed by privileged users.

What is a privileged user?

By definition, a privileged user is someone who has been given greater or more wide-ranging rights on the IT network: access rights, authorisation management, device and application administration, file editing, deletion or transfer, etc. Privileged users may, furthermore, be either inside or outside the company. His or her rights are assigned by the company’s legal representative, who is often not even aware of the risks involved by such level of rights. Privileged users naturally have access to the company’s critical and strategic data as well as to the confidential information of the company and its employees. He or she effectively has the power of life and death over the company’s IT infrastructure.

Is a privileged user always an internal employee of the company?

Whenever a company outsources the management of all or part of its IT , the service providers who remotely control or work on the internal network in order to provide support or maintenance become privileged users although they are not employees of the company in itself. Do you know, for example, what are the access rights of a technician who comes to repair the IP photocopier or the network connection?

In other words, outsourcing, for a company, can be similar to entrusting the “office keys” to a stranger, who could then enter every room and open all of the cupboards, search them and take and put back whatever he or she finds there by managing the access permissions. If anything is damaged, disappears or is simply stolen as a result, what is to be done? How do I know what was done? Where was there a problem? When? How did it occur? Who will pay for the damage? How can I justify the incident or theft to my insurance company?

What are the risks relating to privileged users?

Due to their status, privileged users, like “standard” users, pose risks to the business network. These risks fall into the following categories:

Risks relating to human error: like any other user, privileged users are only human and can make mistakes on a network for whatever reason; these errors can have serious consequences for the productivity, reputation and turnover of the company concerned, however.

Imagine, for example, that an external service provider makes a mistake while performing remote maintenance on an e-commerce website server, causing it to fail. As a result, the e-merchant loses turnover until the fault is repaired — once its cause has been found. This may take some time, not only causing even more harm but also permanently damaging the e-Merchant’s reputation. In the meantime, its customers will go elsewhere.

As a result of the latest regulations, business must report any incidents and risk being fined for the loss of any customer information (customer data, credit/debit card numbers, or health-related data).

In a recent case, hundreds of patients’ records were published on the Internet. This only came to light when a person happened to enter their name into a search engine and found that their entire medical file could be consulted by anyone. This type of data leakage can be caused either by human error (an external service provider incorrectly follows the process, allowing the data to escape) or by a malicious act highlighting the risks relating to privileged users.

Risks relating to disgruntled staff: privileged users are only human. A privileged user who leaves a company on bad terms may therefore be tempted to use his or her rights to harm the company or to steal critical information (client files, credit/debit card details, secrets, etc.).

In 2012, for example, a Toyota company subcontractor whose contract had been terminated stole information on the Japanese manufacturer’s industrial patents. How many customer database records have been stolen, or messages disclosed? How much information has been obtained from illicitly-downloaded IT files? Here too, there is the problem of finding the data leakage source. Who did that? When and how? Why did this person have access to this data in particular? Can we prevent or log such acts and, if so, how? How can this be managed internally and with my external service providers?

According to a Forrester survey, 50 per cent of all privileged users leave their company or facilities management assignment with sensitive data. How can we therefore assess or, better still, talk of risk management without dealing with this subject? Fortunately, more and more IT departments and CISOs meet their companies’ internal audit or general management requirements by using a solution that addresses the problem of managing both internal threats and those of external service providers. They have done so by providing for the integration of a Privileged User Management (PUM) solution in their security policies.

Despite the problem’s urgency, the awareness around PUM market is still in very light .

WALLIX, the pioneer in Privileged User Management thanks to its solution Wallix AdminBastion, naturally recommends that companies protect themselves against threats from outside their network. These threats are well-known and now well-countered by means of solutions such as antiviruses, firewalls, IPS, IDS etc. However, WALLIX emphasizes the urgent need to supplement these measures by internal privileged user control solutions.

These solutions have a bad reputation, however: in all too many cases, they are perceived as products that are purely and simply intended to monitor privileged users. Contrary to expectations, they often also exonerate these users by providing tangible, concrete proof of the actual cause of the incident.

In the words of Jean-Noël de Galzain, founder of WALLIX, the pioneering privileged user management solution vendor: “A consistent, end-to-end security policy can no longer do without privileged user management solutions. Every day, privileged users access data that is essential and strategic for the company’s survival and profitability. Although, of course, malice is not usually the major cause of data loss, the problem of human error on a network is very real and can assume catastrophic proportions on the Internet level. We must stress to the IT departments, CISOs and the IT security departments the risks involved in terms of productivity, reputation and compliance for public and private enterprises. Internal risk management is just as important as external threat management.”

WALLIX provides innovative IT access control and traceability solutions. Its Wallix AdminBastion product provides a privileged user access control and traceability solution. Wallix AdminBastion serves as an authentication “safety lock” for all privileged users and logs their actions for later viewing, thereby simplifying the search for an incident’s cause. By assisting in traceability, Wallix AdminBastion also allows enterprises to improve their compliance with the current IT security standards such as PCI DSS, SOX, Basel II, etc. The Wallix AdminBastion solution is simple to use and does not require an agent. In a matter of hours, it can be deployed and monitoring all privileged accounts’ activities.